Bob and Cleo Liebl were going to present a British colonial effort at an upcoming HMGS convention, and they invited several of us to test out the rules. The intent is to host 8 gamers… only 7 showed up for the test game, but that presented no difficulty. The table consisted of a layout of beautiful 2-feet-by-2-feet-square terrain boards… all sorts of rivers and gulleys and ravines and so on. The length of the table was 6 feet on the short side, 12 feet on the long side. Near one of the short sides was a town, populated with British-type people, besieged by Pathans, and there were three British relief columns making their way from the opposite short side of the board, some 9 feet away. For ease of reference, I’ll dub the rules Liebl British Colonials (LBC). I’ve written about them before… Bob and Cleo have been working with this set for a couple of years, fine tuning them, changing them, tweaking them… they have yet to achieve perfection. The sequence in LBC is fairly simple, of the A-move/B-fire variety… Each side dices for orders British move… Natives fire.. Resolve melee Natives move British fire Resolve melee The orders phase is interesting. Each side has several ‘divisions’ of troops… for example, my ‘division’ had 4 units of Pathans, and I nominally received 4 order chits, one provided for each unit. I didn’t have to spend an order chitty for a unit, however. I could have a unit fire, using a chit, and then, using 2 additional chitties, have it fire again. The first order used up one chit, and the second, either another move or fire, used up 2 chitties. But by doing this, I was penalizing my other units, preventing orders from being issued to the other units. A maximum of 2 orders could be issued to a unit. Another problem for my Pathans concerned the type of general leading the division… this fellow was ‘average’, and when determining the number of order chitties my men had, I referenced a table, tossed a 6-sided die, and it was possible to lose an order chit, or gain one. Thus the number of order chits for my division could vary from 3 to 5. A total of 4 chits was bad enough… this didn’t give me too many opportunities to have units perform a second action, and I experienced a couple of tosses which deprived me of a chitty, leaving me with only 3 chits for my 4 units. What to do? Whatta ya mean, what to do? You cheat, of course! And so, what I’d do was to toss the 6-sided die, and regardless of its outcome, I’d grab 4 order chitties. In contrast to my paucity of order chitties, the Brits in the town suffered from an overload of chits. There were 3 British units, 2 Gatlings, one cannon, and a couple of civilian groups. Each of these civilian ‘units’ provided the town defenders with extra chits, and the Brits used these to help the military units fire and move. Three native divisions attacked the town, while another 2 tried to impede the progress of the oncoming British relief force. Assisting my Pathans in attacking the town were Big Ed’s Pathans (BEP), and he and I agreed to charge the defenders simultaneously. Together, we had about 8 units, and one would think that that would be enough to overrun the town. And so, the BEP units charged and my troops charged. The BEP cavalry contacted the Brits first… they had a 24 inch charge distance, enough to get them into the town, and, using only a single order chitty, they smacked into the rear of a defending British unit. In previous editions of the LBC rules, I’ve discussed the “sleazy move”, and I’m forced to discuss it again. In this case, the attacking cavalry started out in front of the British unit, yet with their 24 inch charge distance, they had sufficient movement to completely go around to the backside of the Brits, and attack from the rear. LBC permits this sort of folderol, and in every battle, the participants shake their collective heads, mention it to Bob and Cleo… but to no avail. But suddenly… a light at the end of the tunnel! Bob stated that if the British unit had an order chitty around, they could use it to form an ‘emergency square’. Evidently Bob had been thinking of the “sleazy move”, and how it could be countered. In this particular instance, the square was permitted to react (the ‘emergency square’ situation was even so noted on the rules sheet!), but in other instances, there was no counter to “sleazy movedness”. Life goes on. With their plethora of order chitties, of course the British had a spare chit, and the British unit immediately formed square. But it wasn’t over yet, for right after the native movement phase, the sequence provides for British fire. And so, with another chit assigned to the square, the square fired, taking out a couple of cavalrymen. Not being content with that, the square fired again… using an additional 2 chitties… and 2 more cavalrymen fell down. The BEP cavalry took a morale test, tossing two 20-sided dice, tossed high enough and held position. The cavalry combat value started with 5, and knocked off -4 for charging a square, and knocked off another -2 for charging over a linear obstacle (the town walls), and there might have been another modifier or so. But the cavalry combat value was definitely negative, and we referred to a table, which stated that the cavalry had a teensy-weensy chance of killing a Brit. In contrast, the British combat value started with 3, and added a couple of positive modifiers, and they killed a couple of cavalryman. The BEP cavalry had had enough… they withdrew. This left my troops sort of dangling… I thought my boys would follow up where the cavalry left off, but they left off too soon. I had two 12-man units of fanatic Pathans in the town, and I charged the British Gatling guns, which were taking huge chunks out of the Pathans. But there’s a right way and a wrong way to charge… and I, of course, chose the wrong way. If I had charged only one Gatling gun unit, it would have fired during the British fire phase, but the other Gatling could not have fired, since the LBC rules state that a unit can not fire into an existing melee. By charging both Gatlings, both Gatlings were permitted defensive fire… in fact, they used additional chitties and fired twice… and my boys melted away. The firing routines specified a probability of hit (POH) for each man firing… this was a function of range. British rifles, for example, at medium range, were given 30 percent per man, and at long range, had 10 percent per man. At medium range, therefore, a 12-man British unit, the numbers were .30x12, or 3.60, translating into 3 certain casualties and a 60 percent chance of a fourth. And if the British fired a second time, using additional chitties, the effect was devastating on the 12-man Pathan units. Two of my Pathan units carried jezails, long range (30 inches) weapons which proved useless. I set them up at 30 inches, because they were then outside the range of the British rifles (24 inches). And then I went through the numbers. First, at long range, the jezail POH started out at 5 percent per man. But they were of “D” grade (really rotten troops), which decreased the percentage, and they were firing at troops under cover, which reduced it even more. And then, because of the inefficiency of the weapon (taking so long to load) only half of the 12 man unit could fire at any given time. My jezail-bearing persons, it turned out, when I factored in all the appropriate numbers, had a 10 percent chance of hitting anyone. This immediately told me not to waste any more of my precious order chitties on them. And so, for the rest of the battle, half of my force remained dormant, and I concentrated on my two fanatic sword-bearing Pathan units. By Turn #3, the advancing British columns had progressed some 24 inches up the field… they still had about 7 feet to go. But, due to the overwhelming British fire power, they were methodically wiping out all the native units trying to oppose them. I noted that also on the table were some pigs, a lion, an alligator, and some other animals, which were supposed to wander aimlessly (according to a chart) and hinder both Brits and natives. My own troops were never affected… there was a lion near one of my units, but he evidently continued to purr, and he never bothered me. Why these animals were tossed into the scenario, I don’t know, nor do I care to know. I’ve noted before that the LBC rules kinda mix up skirmish procedures and formed unit procedures. For example, one of my 12-man units charged a British unit in a “house’. There was an entire British unit in the “house”, so it really wasn’t a “house’,… it was a couple of houses, capable of holding a battalion of troops. In the melee phase, all the men of my 12-man Pathan unit were permitted to engage all of the Brits… it was unit-on-unit. In contrast, during the firing phase, however, a unit in a “house” was restricted… regardless of the number of men in the “house”, only 2 men could fire through a portal… a door or a window. Which means that here, we’re down to the skirmish level of gaming where the placement of individual figures matters. We Pathans soon gave up the ghost… too much British fire power, too many British order chitties. My own druthers centered on the following: First, too much British fire. The 12-man units, each time they fired, took out a huge percentage of the oncoming Pathans. There was never an opportunity to close, especially with the use of a 2nd order chitty. Second, The civilian units in the town shouldn’t have been issued chits and been able to give them to the British units to help in firing or movement. If anything, the civilians should have been a liability. Third, the jezails were too ineffective. Fourth, Pathan fanatic units should have a higher melee grade. And I didn’t help my own cause in melee by dubbing my fanatics as “D” troops (rotten troops). Fifth, the “sleazy move” has got to be eliminated Sixth, toss out the animals. Back to PW Review October 2000 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. 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